ABOUT MEDIA ALLIANCE Founded in 1979, Media Alliance is an advocacy and service organization dedicated to advancing the independent media arts in New York State. Media Alliance is the only statewide media organization of its kind in the country, with members including media arts centers, distributors, museums, libraries, educators, cable access and public television programmers, and independent artists and producers. Media Alliance responds to over 3,000 requests for information and resources a year, publishes a bi-monthly newsletter Media Matters, and regularly convenes members for workshops, conferences, and working groups on pressing issues. Among Media Alliance's current programs are the Media Action Grant, providing funding to rural media arts groups, and the Emerging Media Artist Program, offering workshops and resources for artists from traditionally underserved communities.

Positioned between local and national groups. Media Alliance serves as an information clearinghouse on video preservation for the media arts field, linking media groups with national and regional experts in archiving and conservation. In 1991, Media Alliance and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) conducted a national survey of video art collections. Later the same year Media Alliance and NYSCA convened the first video preservation symposium for the media arts field in New York, hosted by the Museum of Modem Art. The conference material, the survey, and extensive research formed the basis for the monograph Video Preservation: Securing the Future of the Past by Deirdre Boyle, published in 1993. During 1994, a day long series of workshops on video preservation were held as part of the Media Alliance conference Multiple Currents: Toward an Interactive Media Community. Media Alliance has also organized trainings and networking meetings, and has provided fundraising assistance to New York regional groups.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Hubbard began making films in 1975 and over the past 10 years has been increasingly concerned with issues of film and video preservation. In 1987, he co-founded the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival. From 1991 through 1996, he worked at Anthology Film Archives. In conjuction with the National Moving Image Database, he created the first computer catalog of Anthology's film and video collection encompassing over 5,000 titles and, under a grant from the Jerome Foundation, inventoried and cataloged the entire Jerome Hill Collection. Currently, he is preparing a report on the need for archival storage of work by makers with AIDS for Media Network, a national organization promoting social change media.

Video Preservation: Securing the Future of the Past by Deirdre Boyle is available from Media Alliance http://www.mediaalliance.org

https://archive.org/details/videopreservatio00boyl

FOREWORD

Since the publication of our 1993 monograph. Video Preservation: Securing the Future of the Past, the media arts field has continued to pursue the long-term goal of preserving video art and community video for education, exhibition and research. This report seeks to update and expand upon some of the issues dealt with in Video Preservation, and at Media Alliance's last two conferences. While it emphasizes activity in the geographic area with which we are most familiar - the New York region - we hope it will be helpful to our colleagues across the country.

The media arts field has learned a great deal about preservation in the last five years, adding yet more complex information to our already complex lives. The passion that we have brought to creating a safe future for our fragile history should not be underestimated. We have learned that video preservation requires a multi-faceted approach, like keeping many plates in the air simultaneously: storage, cataloging, remastering, collection management. We have learned new languages, and been introduced to whole new fields of work. In this environment ifs not easy to see our progress. Yet, I hope the contents of this report will remind us of the outcomes of our daily work.

This report is organized into six areas of overlapping concern that emerged in preparation for the Multiple Currents conference in the fall of 1994. They are not meant to be exclusive, but rather to be points of departure. Happily, in each of these areas, progress has been made, although the future remains unquestionably precarious. We can be reassured by the fact that we are on the eve of another gathering. Playback 1996, a conference organized by the Bay Area Video Coalition. The BAVC conference will no doubt bring us to a new level of understanding and expertise, and will be looked back upon as a milestone where new alliances were made, new plans launched - the content for our next progress report!

Mona Jimenez Executive Director Media Alliance

RELATIONSHIPS

The need for cooperation and collaboration

One of the most pressing problems in the preservation of video is the lack of a public presence by the field of independent media. Utterly overshadowed, indeed dwarfed by broadcast television, the work of video artists and community activists does not loom large in the public consciousness. Perhaps this will always be the case. However, in order to make preservation of these materials possible, we need to convince others of the importance of these works. National and statewide organizations such as Media Alliance and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), through their connections with hundreds of media organizations and individuals, have played a crucial role in bringing attention to these overlooked videotapes. There is still much work to do to educate not only funders, but also potential users of the materials, such as educators, scholars, curators, and programmers. Also, many archivists and conservators - who are traditionally responsible for an institution's collections - need education on the care and handling of tapes, and their historical and cultural significance.

Over the past several years, the media arts field has become more aware of, and involved with, other groups involved with moving image preservation. There has been an increased recognition of the valuable knowledge of media producers and professionals about how, when, and in what context tapes were produced, as well as technical knowledge about tape formats and equipment. However, media arts groups are typically unfamiliar with moving image preservation, conservation, and collection management, and lack staff to perform such tasks. Thus, partnerships between the media arts field and other moving image specialists are essential to the long-term care of independent video collections.

One opportunity that exists is to create dialogue with the video or media subcommittees of various archivist groups, such as the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists. These groups are working on various parts of the preservation problem, including establishing standardized language for describing the materials in library catalogs or finding aids, and setting policies and procedures for care and handling, including duplication, of the materials. Many archivists and librarians may be more used to dealing with, and certainly more comfortable with, books and paper materials, while having charge of vast collections of videotapes. Books and paper materials do not necessarily present the complex problems of these endangered video collections. Paper materials can survive much greater variance in temperature and humidity and are capable of remaining intact for far longer periods than videotape. They do not require specialized machines in order for people to experience them. Media arts groups must position themselves to offer their expertise to these dedicated groups, to ensure the continued existence and usefulness of the thousands of videotapes in their care.

Cataloging language is another area in which stronger relationships with allies are needed. Cataloging rules and cataloging software were originally developed by librarians for use with books. These rules, for instance, presuppose an object that is infinitely reproducible and that remains essentially the same whatever the format. Whether hardback or paper, whatever the typeface or the number of pages, Moby Dick is still the intellectual entity Moby Dick. There may, of course, be different editions, but all the thousands of copies of a particular edition of a book will be the same and the records in the catalog will be identical. This is not true of videotape. There are relatively few copies of any single tape and yet, there may be several versions of that tape. Whether a particular copy is a master, sub-master, dub-master, or a reference copy is a vital piece of information. Furthermore, exactly what constitutes a master, sub-master, or a dub-master - the exact meaning of the terms - must be agreed upon if we are going to have compatible databases that allow us to communicate accurately the content of collections. Media producers and professionals, with their hands-on experience with production, are uniquely qualified to take part in the development of a common descriptive language for video materials.

The Playback 1996 conference

The Playback 1996 conference is one example of an effort to build new relationships that has developed into a major international initiative. The Bay Area "Video Coalition (BAVC), in association with Media Alliance, will host this conference on March 29-30, 1996, at the Museum of Modem Art in San Frandsco, California. The conference is funded by both the Getty Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation. The intention is to bring together a diverse group of professionals including conservators, scientists, video artists, media curators, and television engineers who will be dealing with the multifaceted challenge of preserving the vast cultural and artistic history recorded on videotape. Experts from both the conservation and media arts communities will meet in the hope that alliances can be built around the common goal of preserving video collections held in museums, galleries, libraries, and other archives around the world.

BAVC convened eight groups of professionals throughout the United States to discuss eight vital topics in the eight months prior to the event: Installation Art and Obsolete Hardware; Ethical Principals and Dilemmas; Analysis and Evaluation Procedures; Cleaning and Remastering; Establishing Priorities for Preservation; Storage; Current Preservation Practices & Education and Awareness; and Changes in Technology and Practice. Each of the groups will present its findings to the conference in the form of white papers and panel presentations.

The papers and presentations will raise the issues and propose solutions. It is hoped that the conference will stimulate academic and museum-based conservators to write about video preservation issues in conservation journals, and that a curriculum will be developed to train conservators in techniques of video preservation. A long-term goal of the conference is to train conservators and, ultimately, to establish a university program for the training of video preservationists. This program would firmly establish the academic credentials of video conservators and define standards for the preservation of videotape that would be nationally recognized. Such a program would go a long way to eliminating criticisms that no standards exist for preserving videotape.

Another strategy of the conference is to bring members of the conservation community into contact with the media artists and media arts professionals who are involved in video preservation. Currently, some funders are hesitant to fund video preservation projects because they feel that clear standards have not been established, and they question whether videotape is a preservation medium at all. Many museum conservators who are confronted with large collections of aging videotapes are struggling with issues of preservation and can look to media arts professionals for their expertise with the production, care, and handling of videotape. Media arts professionals can greatly benefit from increased contact with conservators, who are experienced in the care of art historical objects, and have established systematic methods for their care. The conference will introduce the issues involved in establishing specific standards for videotape, and will allow for a full discussion of ethical concerns between art conservation and media arts communities.

CATALOGING

In search of compatibility

In January 1994, Media Alliance convened the first meeting of key New York media organizations since the publication of Video Preservation: Securing the Future of the Past. There was consensus that cataloging was a crucial first step to preservation. A compatible database would give groups a common base of knowledge about works in a range of collections, allowing organizations to collaborate on preservation efforts. Also, the group recognized that without certain vital information about the tapes they could not compete for funding for preservation, and, as a result, the collections would have little chance of receiving the acknowledgment they deserved as an important part of the cultural history of the United States.

These observations are confirmed by reading the guidelines of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a major source of funds for preservation activities under the Division of Preservation and Access. Only one project involving video re-mastering has received funding from the division. That project was a collaboration between Thirteen/WNET (New York's public television station) and the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library to remaster the Dance in America series. Intellectual access - knowing what is in a collection and making the information available to scholars and the public - is a pre-requisite to funds for other preservation activities.

Within the media arts field we are acutely aware that access to most media arts collections is extremely limited, and in some cases impossible. Outside the catalogs of a few distributors, organizational and funder records, and a loose network of contacts within the field, there is no way to locate early works. The array of local methods (cataloging on index cards, paper lists, and various computer programs) makes for time-consuming and frustrating searches. Also the use of localized vocabularies has made the sharing of information extremely difficult. For example, without agreement on terms, one cannot identify primary source material; what is a "master" to one could be labeled an "original" in a near-by collection.

One example of the difficulties created by this lack of documentation is that encountered by the non-profit distributor Video Data Bank while creating Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S, their recently completed series of tapes on the history of video art. The lack of documentation on specific tapes continuously plagued the project. Most of the information was gleaned from distribution catalogs. This made establishing a definitive version of each work extremely difficult. They found, for example, that a version of a particular tape held by Electronic Arts Intermix (another non-profit distributor) differed significantly from the Video Data Bank version. Which one of the tapes would constitute the "correct" version could be impossible to tell. This, of course, is a more general problem in video preservation. Without information on various versions or different physical states of a tapes housed in more than one collection, there is no way to know whether a particular version of a tape is the best one extant for preservation.

Furthermore, the differing terminology indicates a general lack of communication between institutions collecting videotapes and weakens the influence of the field. Government and private funders see a bewildering array of terminology and descriptions and remain unconvinced of the importance of cataloging videotape and of the expertise of those holding the work. With a substantial number of institutions participating in a collaborative cataloging project, the effort becomes much stronger and more impressive. Also, information about collections greatly increases their potential use by a wide range of people. With catalogued collections, it will be possible for the first time to target those tapes in dire need of immediate preservation, to indicate those tapes that will hold the most interest for scholars and funders, and to convince others of the vital importance of these tapes within video history.

Substantial obstacles stand in the way of creating a compatible database among a number of organizations, not the least of which is a lack of funding for staff, hardware, software, and technical assistance for preservation projects. Groups generally have one computer for everything - from doing mailings to creating exhibition brochures and dealing with everyday administrative details. Information contained in a computer catalog of video holdings needs to be accessible to the organization for other uses, and easily inputted and retrieved by both professional and volunteer staff.

Approaching the NEH

Media Alliance tackled the issue of intellectual access by making application to the NEH for a grant to create a database of over 8,000 titles held in twelve organizations across New York State. This is the first known example of a compatible cataloging project among media organizations across a broad geographic area. Participating organizations include Anthology Film Archives (New York City), Art Media Studies Department of Syracuse University, Centre de Estudios Puertorriquenos (New York City), Experimental Television Center (Owego), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (Buffalo), Media Bus (Woodstock), Paper Tiger Television (New York City), Port Washington Public Library, Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester) and the Woodstock Public Library. These twelve collections represent a unique historical record of the earliest attempts to create video art and community television. The project, if funded, will greatly facilitate communication and the exchange of information between the institutions. This initiative is the first step toward the goal of creating a national standard for cataloging videotapes that would fully serve the needs of both small and mid-sized arts and cultural organizations and archivists.

These collections held by the twelve groups offer a remarkable and important picture of the early history of video and represent areas that tend to be overlooked in larger collections that are geared toward more mainstream work. The collections are concentrated in two broad areas of video production: video art and video collectives/community video. The tapes were generally made between 1968 and 1985 and the majority of them are on 1/2" reel-to-reel, the most endangered of video formats because of its age and obsolescence. The tapes are extremely diverse in style, approach, and production technique. They were produced in all areas of the state and present the viewpoints of people not usually represented in commercial broadcasts. Furthermore, the participating organizations are all either small institutions or small collections within larger institutions that would otherwise be unable to support the cataloging process.

The project would not only provide access to this information for the first time, but create a model for other cooperative cataloging projects. Currently, the usual practice in this field is for each institution to create its own database with its own local vocabulary. Even those organizations using USMARC, a nationally recognized standard for cataloging, use local terminology in their moving image databases. This project will establish a single template with a unified vocabulary and set of terms in a single practical, accessible, and user-friendly database. Once this is in place, scholars, researchers, archivists, and catalogers can be certain that a particular term in the record of one institution will have the same meaning as an identical term in the record of another institution.

The NEH project was proposed in partnership with National Moving Image Database (NAMID). NAMID is a major program of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation, which was established in 1984 by the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Film Institute. NAMID's mandates are to serve as a working tool to help in making informed decisions regarding the preservation of moving image materials, to facilitate shared cataloging, and to increase access to primary research materials on moving images. Along with major institutions, several media arts centers are already NAMID participants: Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts Intermix, and the Kitchen Center for Contemporary Arts. While the first NEH proposal was not funded. Media Alliance reapplied in June 1995, and expects notification in April 1996. More importantly, the first proposal led to a series of meetings and collaborations that strengthened relationships among the media arts field, NAMID, and others involved in moving image cataloging.

The Upstate Pilot Cataloging Project

One such collaboration began in August 1994 in Rochester, New York. Representatives from Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Visual Studies Workshop, Experimental Television Center, and Syracuse University met in Rochester, New York, for a workshop led by Margaret Byme, then Director of NAMID. As a result of that meeting, the four organizations agreed to begin a regional cataloging effort using a common template designed by NAMID. The template, designed on FilemakerPro software, was developed and tested at several sites throughout the country, including at Electronic Arts Intermix and the Video Data Bank. In developing the template, NAMID grappled with the extremely complex and intertwined problems of accessibility, non-standard information format, non-standardized vocabulary, different computer platforms, and numerous computer programs. The template addresses the problem described above, where organizations have extremely limited resources for hardware and software. FilemakerPro was chosen because it is versatile, powerful, and user-friendly and works well on both Macintosh and IBM platforms. The template is designed to allow conversion to USMARC by NAMID as the final step in becoming part of NAMID's national database.

Although NAMID data is not currently accessible remotely, NAMID staff will perform searches by request. AFI has recently become a node on the Internet and has a Web site currently under construction (some data is already available at www.afionline.org). NAMID itself expects to be on-line with some databases in the summer of 1996. Once the system is fully functional, all processed data will be made available through the AFI site, and eventually through links to participant sites.

The Upstate Pilot Cataloging Project took a another large step forward in May 1995 with a training session involving the same groups. The training was made available by Media Alliance and led by Jim Hubbard of Anthology Film Archives, with the assistance of Henry Mattoon, who succeeded Margaret Byrne as Director of NAMID. The participants were trained in data entry on the FileMakerPro template, and they hammered out further changes in the template to meet their requirements for ease of use and completeness of information. The participants also agreed to use a unified vocabulary for use with the template.

Progress in cataloging is not without its problems. Even small changes in the template take time, and the discussion on vocabulary is by no means over. However, the significance of this collaborative effort should not be underestimated. Further, this is the first time that a consortium of groups with video collections has created such a template. Over 1,800 records have been created to date by the Pilot Upstate Cataloging Group using the FilemakerPro template.

Resources for a developing language

There have been, of course, earlier efforts in the area of standardized cataloging and terminology. These include: the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2), the standard rules for library cataloging; the Archival Moving Image Materials (AMIM) manual, which sets forth the general rules for cataloging moving images; and Moving Image Materials: Genre Terms (MIM), which tackles the complex problem of terms for genre and form. These were pioneering efforts in an attempt to bring together the needs of moving images catalogers and the already established standards for library cataloging.

The Cataloging and Documentation Committee of the Association of Moving Image Archivists recognized the desirability of revising MIM as early as 1992. In 1994, an interorganization group was formed with representatives of those originally responsible for MIM, and representatives from the film studies and archival moving image communities. It was the committee's sense that involving representatives from both the cataloging and scholarly communities would provide different perspectives and therefore create an improved genre list. This effort was headed by Linda Tadic of the University of Georgia.

In the summer of 1995, the Motion Picture/Broadcasting/Recorded Sound Division and the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) of the Library of Congress created a Form/Genre Working Group to establish a large list of form and genre terms, compatible with Library of Congress Subject Headings, with subsets for the various specific special format areas. Moving images and recorded sound are included as subsets. Although the formation of this group supersedes the AMIA Committee, undoubtedly the Library's work will build on and extend the principles established by the earlier group. The Library envisions publishing a guide to form and genre terms both on-line and in book form. The Library expects input from users and professional organizations and intends to be responsive to library users, archival needs, and scholarly publications by incorporating changes and new terminology and publishing them on-line.

Next Steps

The future remains uncertain for any broadening of cataloging efforts, due to the lack of funding for arts and cultural organizations, and their overworked or non-existent staff. The situation may even worsen as funding for the arts continues to decrease. With severe cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, and changes in guidelines, the future of NAMID is called into question. NAMID must be stabilized, with increased funding for the participating sites, in particular smaller museums, libraries, and artist spaces. The media arts community must demonstrate its support for NAMID and continue to advocate for equitable distribution of preservation funds between video and film.

Clearly, media arts groups need to be active in developing the vocabulary for describing videotapes. Even though media arts staff are not trained archivists and cataloging language is unfamiliar to them, it is important that they become part of the process; first, because as makers they have crucial knowledge of the material, and second, because the future of their tapes is intimately bound up with the establishment of these standards. Media arts groups must be aware of the efforts of standing committees and seek input into their proceedings individually and collectively.

Media Alliance expects to receive word about its NEH grant in April 1996. If the project is funded, it will propel the regional cataloging endeavor to a new level. Nevertheless, education must be continued to build awareness among private and public hinders of the need for cataloging, and to build an understanding within the media arts community of the benefits of accessible, standardized/and shared cataloging.

REMASTERING

The question of archival formats

Remastering of videotapes continues to be an urgent problem. Thousands of important tapes are in danger of being lost permanently because of their deteriorating physical condition and the fact they were produced in now obsolete formats. 1 /2" open-reel tapes are the most endangered tapes. First, because generally they are the oldest tapes; second, because there are a decreasing number of machines available to play them on; and third, because many of the tapes have been stored under adverse circumstances. These tapes are extremely fragile and can clog the playback machines, causing them to stop running. As a consequence, the tapes must be thoroughly cleaned before being transferred to a newer, more stable format.

In preservation and conservation circles, moving images are still considered a new medium, while, in fact, the video medium is nearly thirty years old. Currently, videotape is not considered to be an archival format, as the term "archival" is generally reserved for formats that last at least 100 years. Unfortunately, this narrow definition causes severe problems for those attempting to preserve tapes. Many preservation/conservation funders (such as the NYS Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials) will not support preservation on a format considered to be non-archival. There is continued debate over a suitable archival format, with arguments for transferring to everything from Betacam SP to film, laser disk, or other digital formats. Yet with each passing year, we lose not just the tapes themselves. We also lose the equipment and parts, and the ability to re-manufacture them. Also disappearing are the engineers and scientists, the artists and producers, and those who know how and when the works were produced.

Experimentation by the Bay Area Video Coalition

BAVC stands in the forefront of the effort to clean and remaster videotapes in order to preserve them for the future. In 1993, BAVC received a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in order to establish a center for remastering obsolete formats of videotape, with the goal of developing the highest quality services at the lowest possible price. The project was developed under the leadership of Sally Jo Fifer, Executive Director of BAVC, and Luke Hones, Director of Research and Development.

After extensive research, BAVC established remastering services within their already existing non-profit video production facilities. BAVC remasters predominantly 1/2" open reel tapes, but also has the capacity to remaster 3/4" and 1" Type C tapes. Cleaning of the 1 /2" reel-to-reel tapes is offered through an arrangement with Tape Services in Santa Clara, California, utilizing a specially designed cleaning machine. The machine has tissue wipes that rotate at 6 revolutions per minute, a "sapphire blade" module that scrapes dirt off the tape, 2 slotted grid cleaners and a vacuum to remove the loose dirt. Through this process, both sides of the tape are cleaned. After cleaning, the tape is transferred at BAVC to a tape format chosen by the client. The choices include 3/4", SVHS, Betacam SP and Digital Betacam among others. BAVC claims a 98 success rate after cleaning and remastering approximately 2,000 tapes. They freely share information about their processes, and have produced a videotape describing their methods.

BAVC offers remastering services to members. BAVC membership costs $35 per year, but is available to members of certain other media access centers for only $15 per year. The cleaning costs for open reel tapes are $6 per pass for each small reel and $11 per pass for each large reel. Initial cleaning requires 2-4 passes, but some tapes need as many as 16 passes to get through the transfer machine. The cleaning costs for 3/4" are $7 per pass for 30 minutes or less, $8 per pass for 31-60 minutes, and $10 per pass for more than 60 minutes. Transfer costs are based on the target format. For example, VHS is $50 per reel; 3/4" SP is $60; Betacam SP is $70; and Digital Betacam is $80. The price of stock is additional. There is a $15 per hour spot check fee and, if, after a partial transfer the heads become clogged, there is a $15 charge for work completed. The signal is put through a time-based corrector and bars and tone are added. The client can request a slate page and titles...